- Carl Boyd
It was obvious at an early age that Carl was very artistic and he entered Liverpool College of Art on a scholarship when he was 12 years old. His main interests were fashion design and fabrics and for many years he worked in department stores and was appointed the first dressmaking and fashion advisor for the John Lewis Partnership store in Oxford St in 1963. He later joined the Harrods Group and was appointed a coat buyer at D.H.Evans also in Oxford St were he remained until he moved to Penzance, Cornwall in 1970.
In 1967 he purchased his first knitting machine a Brother 588 push button, and so began his love affair with machine knitting. He continued to design and make wedding dresses but also started to design knitwear and in 1982 purchased a Passap Duo 80. Gradually he stopped dressmaking to concentrate more on knitwear design. In 1990 he produced his first collection of knitwear patterns for the domestic knitting machine which he launched at the N.E.C. Birmingham that same year. The patterns proved a huge success and were eventually available on sale world wide. He produced a collection every year up until 1998. In 1997 he was invited to lecture and do hands on workshops in Australia visiting Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney spending a week in each city.
In 1998 the popularity of machine knitting had waned and he decided to retire. However in 2006 Anne Smith of Machine Knitting Monthly encouraged him to start designing again. The first of his new designs appeared in the magazine in 2007 and since then a number of articles and more designs. In 2008 he started teaching again and at the invitation of Carol Hocknell was a tutor at Metropolitans Dream Week held in September. He found this so succesful and enjoyable that in 2009 he is doing hands on workshops for Metropolitan in February and November and will again be doing their Dream Week in 2010. On 6th March 2010 he hopes to be showing new designs at Machine Knitting Live in Bournemouth which is a wonderful show dedicated to machine knitting.